I Only Sort Of Signed Up For This
by RedFoxSocks
Summary: Stuck in a dead-end and frankly ridiculous job, Clare Ridell is told to go all Nancy Drew by her boss. Except nothing like that and things get weird and messy surprisingly quickly. Possible romance later, focus on Steve/Tony/Bruce
1. Chapter 1

When I moved to New York, I'd largely been swayed by scenes in off-beat and knowing romcoms, where flash mobs erupted in Times Square and muppets fought to save their show in a montage set to nostalgic rock music. And people danced with hot but unassuming guys. Or, failing that, hot and totally assuming guys. Unfortunately, a more accurate trailer for where I had ended up would be in black and white. And not in the classy way, either. And it would probably show that one time when I tried to look around Times Square by myself and a pigeon feather blew into my mouth and some tourists took a photo.

Luckily for me, there was no need to walk through anywhere vibrant or crowded to get to my office now. Who'd have thought New York could be quite so impressively grey and boring? There were still a lot of suspicious looking pigeons, though, but I'd learned to keep my mouth firmly shut.

I shook my head, and forced myself to make eye contact with Mr Henries, my boss. "Eye contact," he had informed me on my first day, "is the route to friendship. And where friendship goes, stories flow." There had followed an uncomfortable silence in which he stared into my eyes, as if to prove his point. I hadn't wanted to contradict his lesson by looking away and so we'd just stood there, unblinking, for a while. It marked the first of many unsettling sessions of 'contact time', as he insisted on calling it. It never got less weird.

Mr Henries pulled my mind back into the plastic chair I was sat in by sucking his teeth loudly, which was never a good sign. "I would suggest we do a piece on these, erm… 'Avenger' mascots. Y'know, that's what the people are hankering for"

I often wonder what he means by 'people' because, as far as I'm aware, the 200 strong audience of pensioners that read the 'New York Decor: Carpets, Drapes and Tapestries' section of the paper I'm assigned to are a fairly niche bunch and, unless a new line of Avengers sisal-style fringed rugs are coming out, this wouldn't be something that they were 'hankering' for.

I should never have agreed to work for a man who still used the verb 'hankering', either. I Cursed my lack of standards and my rookie error of mistaking a well groomed mustache for class and friendliness. I frequently cursed that damn mustache. My mum had suggested that I was deflecting my issues, but I remained fairly sure that I would've kept looking for work had there been no mustache.

As I sat in the meeting, staring balefully at the deceptive mustache above my boss's lip, which had a piece of tuna stuck in it that day, my father's words began, as they so often did, to roll through my head "You don't need to go to college for journalism!" my father from the past was insisting, 'journalism is grit, experience and a rum-and ready attitude! Not pieces of...of _paper_, I mean, you can _write_, the rest is practice!"

Henries looked at me, clearly expecting a response. Not that that was unjust, in his defense: this was an ideas meeting, and what that really meant was me being required to beam at his every syllable, and him looking like a wounded puppy if I offered any reservations.

I blinked to prepare for Extreme Eye Contact. "Um, yep, people are really interested in that, and we don't know a lot about it, so, yes, original-" Henries cut me off:

"Isn't it?! This could be where our deductive skills come into their own. This would be big Miss Ridell, real big."

"You know how I feel about being called-" I began, but then I decided that someone really ought to get to a point here, so I sighed and let it pass. "Um, but is that where we really excel? Investigative journalism?" Henries frowned. His eyes at labrador stage. I needed to act before they reached basset hound. "It's just that, Phyllis, Phil and me are the only people who work in this department and, well, they're carpet, curtains and tapestry specialists." There was a pause. Henries looked at me like I was missing the point. I tried to clarify: "Not… Not really current affairs. Not conspiracy theories. Unless they're about thread counts."

Henries' face darkened for a moment: the thread count scandal had been dramatic. Or, as dramatic as carpets could be. He shook his head, and I watched with mild disdain as the tuna flicked across the room. "Miss Ridell," again, I shuddered at the 'Miss' he insisted on using, like he lived in an episode of _Mad Men._ "You're ambitious. You could do it." I gawped at him, and then narrowed my eyes. "Why?" I asked slowly. "I, I just think you'd do a good job" he blustered back.

"I'm an intern."

"Yes, yes, yep. I know. You've been an intern what… a year and a half? Is that it? Long time."

"It's not really my area-"

"Well, if it were to go good- you get your story, it could be your area, I suppose… You did mention a _penchant_ for the hard hitting in your interview, I recall..."

Henries was so enjoying this- leaving a little ellipsis at the end of each sentence rather than explaining what he was actually saying.

"So you'd hire me? If it went well?" I'd never thought of myself as a particularly direct person before going there, but apparently that's what happens when you're faced with a man incapable of articulating anything. "I just think you've been an intern for a long time, give you some responsibility."

Bullshit. He loved having me as an intern- I still had to work incredibly hard or he'd dismiss me, he paid me pittance and he got to have me bring him endless cups of coffee and no one could call sexism because I wasn't a proper employee.

He bit his lip nervously and, tapping his pen to what I was fairly sure was the tune from _The Flintstones_, added "And, erm...That Tony Stark's a, a ladies man, right? Start with him. Go to, to a bar or something. Do something like that."

And that, ladies and gentleman, was why I was _really _being chosen: young and in possession of a vagina. Classy.

I was also pretty sure that the kind of behaviour he was advocating would violate some journalistic standards. See, I'd know this stuff if I'd gone to college.

"So," I started to clarify, "You want me to, sort of, go undercover?"

"I suppose that's what they, what they're, um, calling it nowadays." He mumbled, rolling his pen beneath his sausage fingers and keeping his eyes fixed on my shoulder.

Now, I recognize that everything about this seemed like a really bad idea: I had no training or skills, there wasn't even any proof that the "Avengers" existed and the 'womanly wiles' Henries clearly wanted me to deploy had, despite my best efforts, consistently evaded me throughout my life. But I also knew that the week prior to this Henries had made me book him an appointment for a prostate exam, and then suggested I give myself a mammogram, and that made my decision a whole lot easier. I didn't seem to me like things could really get any lower.

I closed my eyes. "I'll do it."

His eyes snapped up from the focus point they'd found on my chest. "You will? Aw, that's great, great news. I gotta tell you, I am really excited about this project. It, it could be really great."

"When do I start?"

"Start?" He said with surprise, like it hadn't occurred to him. "Well, I suppose, now? No time like the present and all that."

"I, right... OK." I stood up and turned from the room. As I walked away, I hesitated- should I thank him? This was technically a big chance for me, right? However, my moment of contemplation was cut short when Henries clapped his hand on my ass and shouted "Good luck, little lady!" I pursed my lips. No, a thank you was not in order.

Right, I thought to myself as I stood in purple-painted annex ascribed to the Decor section. A real job. A task that doesn't involve stapling finance letters together, great. Now what?

I decided to start by taking some stuff out of my desk- it was hardly full, as to litter it with my personal possessions seemed to me a bit like giving part of my soul to the office, and that bummed me out pretty hard, but I wouldn't be back for a while, so why leave anything?

Phil and Phyllis (who are married, by the way. Did I mention that? Because I make a point of highlighting the ridiculousness of that situation) watched me as I cleared out some stuff from my desk, and I felt the need to explain: "I'm not fired," I said, with just a hint of defensiveness- I mean, who wants to be the girl who couldn't even hold down a job where the most challenging task was deciding whether something was beige or cream? They didn't respond. As a rule, if it's not made of wool or can't be hung in a living room, it doesn't interest Phil and Phyllis.

And then I took a deep breath, and pushed on the exit door.

...And then I realized it was a pull door and hurriedly tried to make it look like I'd just been stretching before. Before Henries could approach me to depart 'wisdom', I left the building.


	2. Chapter 2

I would imagine a lot of people who had been told to simply 'go investigate' and nothing more specific would have been tempted to take a day off and crash at home. I am not one of these people, because if I stayed home I'd have to explain it all to James.

It wasn't that I didn't want to tell him or anything like that, but if I did he'd be worried. The idea of me walking around New York by myself all day would bug him I knew, 'cause he didn't like it when I went out on my own for too long other than for work. If I stayed home he'd be there all day- he's a stock broker and he took Tuesdays off rather than Saturdays. He said everything happened on Saturdays.

He and I met in a bar during my early days in NY. I was 18 and just had moved in from North Dakota (home of literally nothing), and, sad as it sounds, he really impressed me. He was just so… sorted. He was only a few years older than me (well, there was a nine year gap, much to the dismay of my parents), and he was handsome and whip-smart. For a while, when I was around him, it felt like there was a good chance I could get a good job, and I had butterflies in my tummy in the good way, not in the which-one-of-these-strangers-looks-likely-to-rape-me way. The first time I saw him, he looked at me with his big green eyes, smiled a beautiful, crooked smile and said: "Hey, you look a little lost baby. Need a hand?"

I'd actually ended up taking him back to where I was staying that night. He was the first city boy I'd ever kissed, and I was pretty damn proud of how daring I was being and how I'd met this great guy who was finally going to make this the 'new life' I'd actually envisioned. Here was my movie-style male dance partner at last (and judging by how quickly we ended up leaving the bar together, he was pretty damn assuming). When we got there he looked around at the broken lift and my tiny one-room space and said "Fuck this for shit, come back to mine." No one swore that much in North Dakota. It was fucking amazing.

So I went back to his. And I stayed at his. He said that there was "no fucking way you're going back to that dump, baby." And I was like, hell yeah, I will stay at this place with a functioning kitchen and my own bathroom, yes please. My mum said she really wasn't sure, it was so sudden, it could change pretty quick. I was all, yep, this is New York mum. Things happen quickly, people are driven. It's not North Dakota.

In retrospect, I can see aspects of her point. I really love James. I don't know what I'd do without him- I wouldn't have anywhere to fucking live, for one thing. But it has it's complications.

I opened the door to the apartment and he called out 'Hey Clare, that you?"

"Yep, it's me!"

"What're you doing back, babe?" I grimaced. I didn't want to start this the minute I opened the door, but I knew I had to be assertive, so I sighed and said: "Lunch-break. Please, don't call me babe, yeah?"

"Why? You like it."

"I don't like it now, it's… it makes me feel like a kid."

"Whatever, why are you back? It's like 10am, like shit is it your lunch-break."

Fuck. I cursed my own idiocy. Would it have been so hard to formulate a story that made some sense? "Oh, right, yeah. I meant I forgot my lunch, I wanna make one." He jerked his head but didn't look convinced.

To be fair, he'd have been pretty damn stupid if that story had convinced him. This whole undercover thing was going to be hard.

"Right. You got some time after, babe?" He said, nuzzling his head into my shoulder.

"James, what did I just say?"

"Some crap about lunch?" He giggled.

I resisted the urge to do the easy thing and giggle with him. I was being Bold and Assertive Clare. "I said about you and how you call me 'babe'. I do not like it." Simple. Direct. I hoped he'd just get the point and let it pass.

No such luck.

"Fine, no need to get so fucking tetchy" he snarled, pulling away from me sharply. I could tell he was about to go off on one. "I let you live here, I gave you somewhere actually half-way decent to live, I can't even call you an affectionate name. I get it. Fine."

"I do pay some-" I started to try to defend myself, but it was futile and I knew it.

"Like, 20%, peach. You know I'm doing you a massive favour here."

"Well, kick me out then, if it bothers you so much!" My voice was getting sharper, he was right about the rent. I barely paid any of it. I'd be in some bedsit if he actually took me up on my offer.

"Hey," he said, snapping back to a softer tone and pulling me towards him. "You know I wouldn't, honey. I love you, I love having you live with me. You know that. I just need you to appreciate it sometimes, 'kay? I love you." He kissed the top of my head. I let myself put my arms around his waste and return his embrace. "I know." I murmured into his chest. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"Hey, that's OK." His voice was soft, like he was crooning a lullaby or something. He tilted up my chin and stooped a little so I could reach up to kiss him: I'm pretty tiny, so tiny that James used to say that someone could just carry me off in the street if I wasn't careful (I wasn't sure even at the time if this made me feel cute and elfin or like some sort of leprechaun oddity), and he's pretty tall. He held my head as he kissed me gently, stroking my cheek. It was hard to stay angry, and I let my illusions of assertion fade away.

He broke away suddenly and smirked at me. "I'm gonna go and sit in the other room, 'kay?"

"Yeah, no problem." I smiled back. He walked over to the couch and sat down, and I turned back to face the kitchen. Just as I was walking away, he shouted "Oh, could you make me up some lunch for later?"

"Yep, sure."

"Thanks babe." And with that, he'd won.

I brought him in his sandwich. He was sitting with a beer and the finance pages of the paper. "Here you go, I hope it's OK."

He didn't look up. "Thanks, peach, put it over there, it's too early."

"It's a bit early for beer, too." I couldn't help myself, but as usual I regretted opening my big fat mouth. His head snapped up. "Oh. Wow. You're gonna get at me over that, huh?"

"I was just saying." I said, my eyes on the floor.

"Sure you fucking were, babe. I just hope you know how hard I work, for you, so you don't have to get a real fucking job. You're just a kid, you can't tell me what I can and can't do. I think you should let me relax, don't you?"

I said nothing.

He slammed down his beer and paper and pulled himself up, coming close to my face. "I'm sorry, peach, I can't hear you. You're not saying anything? That's pretty new for you." He was so close I could feel his breath on my face. "Fucking ANSWER ME!" He shouted, making me jump backwards. I opened my mouth to respond, but instead I burst into disgusting, humiliating sobs. I didn't know why- it wasn't like anything bad had happened. I scolded myself for being such a wimp.

He groaned as I blubbed. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it" he caressed my face "hey, I'm sorry, baby. I'm terrible, I'm terrible." He hung his head, "I just get stressed, y'know honey? I love you, so much."

"I love you too" I sniveled.

"You shouldn't, you should send me away, if you told me to get out of your life I would baby. Even though I wouldn't have a life without you. You should leave me"

"I wouldn't do that. I don't want you to leave, don't leave me." I was gibbering now. Like a fucking toddler.

"Don't worry, sweetheart, I'm not gonna. Ever." He held me too him and made 'shh' noises. "You OK now, baby?"

"Yeah. I should get going though." I had some food, a little money and some changes of clothes stuffed in my handbag, and I knew I should really get on with my actual job. A little less crying, a little more working. "Oh? You sure?" He asked, running his hand up my shirt and grazing my waist with his fingertips. I kissed him back for a while, and his touch felt cold on my skin. Sometimes I just felt really overwhelmed by how much I needed him.

When he started heading for my jeans, I pulled away. "I've got to go. But I'll be home tonight. Maybe a little late, though." he pouted.

"Not too late? I need you to keep me warm here."

I smiled, "I'll try my best, I promise."

"OK, but don't make a habit of it. You're not safe out there at night anyway, country mouse." He said, lightly tapping my nose and chuckling. I caught his finger and kissed it, and then slid off his lap. "It's hard though, they need me" I said, as I picked up my bag and headed over to the door. His mouth curled up slightly.

"Sure they do."

I was momentarily stunned. I felt icy. I blinked at him, my lip trembling a little. "What?"

He looked up at me, raising his eyebrows in surprise. "What? I didn't say anything sweetheart."

"They do need me there." I stated, my voice wobbling. Wow, why was that hitting so hard? They did, didn't they? I thought back to Henries staring at my chest, slapping my ass. Maybe they only needed me for one thing. "Babe," he said, coming over to me, "of course they do." He kissed me briefly on my lips and ruffled my hair. "Try to be a little less insecure. Have a good day." He smiled and ambled back to the couch. "I love you!" He called out.

"I love you too" I replied quietly, and let myself out.

**A long chapter, and I promise in the next one there'll be some Avenger action, but I don't want to rush things! Some of this is a bit of a change in character for Clare, but I want to show how manipulative James is and how tiny he makes her feel (literally and figuratively). I feel like I shouldn't explain that and the story should speak for itself etc., but I am NERVOUS! Let me know what you think if you have an opinion! Thanks for reading :)**


	3. Chapter 3

Meanwhile, at SHIELD...

"Agent Hill", boomed Fury, striding through the SHIELD compound in a way that expressed to anyone nearby that he was A Man with Shit to Get Done.

Arriving at Maria Hill's desk, he slammed down a file with force that would have caused anyone else to jump. She, however, merely raised her eyebrows and turned languidly from her monitor. "Yes, Sir?"

"Agent Hill, please enlighten me: why does crap like this keep ending up on my desk? I have a _job _to do, and it sure as hell is not this." Agent Hill pursed her lips before looking up to Fury with narrowed eyes. "I feel the same way when I find them on my desk, Sir, but if you read the entire text you will find that it requires your authorization. It's an important document- a crucial part of the Avengers programme was, and still is_, _damage control."

Not so easily abated, Fury scowled at her. "When did I become the damn press secretary of this place? Don't we have someone who takes care of this stuff?"

Agent Hill smiled slightly and turned back to her computer screen. "Yes, we do. They wrote the document. You just have to sign it."

"Well, since you seem so clued up about the whole thing, please tell me, what exactly am I signing up for?"

Agent Hill sighed before standing up to face him, a file clasped to her chest. "It's a protection scheme. It insists that any press interest in the Avengers Initiative is monitored and shut down, especially in the case of those amongst them who retained a degree of anonymity. And it recommends that the Avengers are housed in New York, at least for now, and preferably close together, so we have easy access to them- and to those who would try to gain access. Also, a ban regarding Tony Stark and press conferences." she finished with a smirk.

Fury nodded. "Sounds like a pretty mammoth task to me."

She shrugged. "Nothing Shield hasn't done before. The hardest part is monitoring journalists, but they're on it." There was a slight pause before she continued: "Now, if you're all caught up, I need to go."

"Right" Fury murmured, examining the file. "Thank you, Agent Hill." She nodded and swept past him into the hall.

Fury stood in her office for a moment. "Damn," he sighed, "they are not going to like this."


End file.
